


Revived and Reunited

by wildeisms



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - No Sparrow Academy (Umbrella Academy), David "Dave" Katz Lives, Dig Up and Resurrect Your Gays, Fix-It, Gratuitous Ignoring of Canon, Hospitals, Klaus and Dave Reunion, M/M, Original Timeline David "Dave" Katz, The Commission But Used For Good, The Reverse of Bury Your Gays, Very Temporary Character Death, author knows nothing about medicine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-28
Updated: 2020-11-16
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:27:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27250444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wildeisms/pseuds/wildeisms
Summary: The apocalypse has been averted, the timeline fixed, and the Hargreeves siblings returned to 2019. Herb decides to do them one more favour and save the life of one Dave Katz.
Relationships: Klaus Hargreeves/David "Dave" Katz
Comments: 16
Kudos: 318





	1. Revived

The pain in Dave’s chest was unbearable. Klaus was above him and he was speaking, but he couldn’t make out what he was saying. He wanted to comfort him, to stop him from panicking and tell him he loved him, but he couldn’t get the words out. He could only try and keep his eyes open, to keep his eyes on Klaus and try to psychically tell him everything he needed him to know, before the pain won out and everything turned black.

And then he woke up.

Though the room around him smelled sterile, it wasn’t like any hospital or medical tent he had ever been in before. He was lying in a crisp, white bed, with a myriad of wires attached to his body. Some of them he recognised, the IV drips were standard, but the majority were completely alien to him, from those puncturing his skin to those seemingly just stuck to it. 

“Good afternoon, Mr Katz,” a smooth, female voice said in an accent that reminded him vaguely of movie stars. But when Dave looked around the room, he was completely alone, accompanied only by strangely flat screens he couldn’t see properly from his position on the bed. “Please remain calm. I have notified our Medical Team that you are awake and someone will be with you shortly.” There was something wrong about that voice, some kind indescribable, minute wrongness that unsettled him.

“Where am I?” he asked.

“You are in the Intensive Care Unit of the Temps Commission Infirmary, Room 9,” the voice said. 

The Temps Commission Infirmary? He’d never heard of that hospital, and it definitely didn’t look American or Vietnamese. “The what? What happened? And who are you?”

“The Temps Commission Infirmary, attached to the headquarters of the Temps Commission. You were shot through the chest in A Shau Valley, Vietnam, February 21, 1968. I am VINA, your Virtual Infirmary Nursing Assistant.”

He’d been shot. He remembered it, remembered the pain, remembered the way Klaus had screamed and held him and how he hadn’t managed to say anything before the world had gone dark. What had happened to Klaus? To everyone? “How long have I been here?”

“You have been in the TCICU for three days, six hours, and thirty seven minutes.”

But when he brought his hand up to his chest, there were no dressings, just bare, unmarked skin. If he had been there for six days, if he’d been shot… He should be dead, or at the very least, heavily bandaged. Before he could think too much about that, a door slid open like something out of a sci-fi movie, and a tall, dark skinned woman with a serious face walked in. “Good afternoon, Mr Katz. My name is Doctor Onyeka Nwoye. How are you feeling?” she asked as she approached his bed, examining the screens. If there hadn’t been much stranger things going on, he would have been mildly surprised by a black lady doctor being sent in to treat him. He forgot, sometimes, that not everywhere was like Texas. But he was immensely glad of that fact, particularly if she’d been the one to fix him up.

“I’m good,” he said, and as confusing as it was, that was true. He shouldn’t be feeling good. He’d been shot, and he felt fine. That shouldn’t be happening. 

“Any pain?”

“No, ma’am.” 

“Good, that’s good. VINA, anything to report?”

“Mr Katz has not experienced any physical complications during the healing process. His body has responded well to the treatment and brain scans indicate that no neurological damage has occurred,” the disembodied voice said. The voice that didn’t belong to a person at all, if Dave had understood correctly. VINA had to be some kind of automaton, a computer that could speak. He didn’t much like that. 

Doctor Nwoye nodded, a faint smile tugging at her lips. “A complete success, then. I would like to keep you under supervision for another twenty-four hours, but if I have no concerns at the end of this period, I see no need to keep you here any longer.” With that, she set about detaching the various wires from his body.

“Where is here? I know we’re in some kinda hospital, the… Commission?”

“Yes. We are an organisation dedicated to fixing, monitoring, and eliminating timeline anomalies,” she said, as if that made any kind of sense. “And, in exceptional circumstances, minimising potential disruptions.”

Dave frowned, trying to translate her words into something close to regular English. He knew he wasn’t that stupid, but he sure felt it. “So I’m a- what was it? A timeline anomaly?”

“I am a doctor, not an analyst. I cannot tell you who or what the timeline anomalies are.” 

“Were you there, when I got shot?” he asked instead. 

Dr Nwoye laughed and shook her head. “Oh Lord, no. I do not have the disposition for time travel, and I think my wife would have my head if I were ever to set foot in the field. I work solely from inside the TCI.”

“Your  _ wife _ ?” he repeated, his heart leaping. This was a woman with a wife. A woman in a world where she could not only love another woman, but marry her and be able to mention it so casually to a complete stranger? 

“Do you have a problem with the fact your life was saved by a lesbian, Mr Katz?” she asked calmly, and his stomach sank.

“No, ma’am! I just… Where I come from, people can’t… I didn’t know there was anywhere you  _ could _ have that kinda marriage.” Was this the future? The place that Klaus had talked about, had said he couldn’t ever go back to? Had Dave somehow ended up there in his place, leaving Klaus in the middle of a war he’d never even signed up for? But that world was ending. Klaus had told him that. So how was he here? “I was just surprised is all. I’m… you know, the same typa way.”

The slight smile returned to the doctor’s face, and Dave relaxed. “It was 1968 you came from, yes?” So that pretty much confirmed his ‘future’ theory. Dave nodded mutely. “I cannot say I know why your survival matters so much yet your injury could not have been prevented, negating the need to bring you here at all, but I will say I am glad you are more… progressive than some of your contemporaries. It does make my job easier.”

“Doctor Nwoye, you are needed urgently in Room 14,” the disembodied voice said before Dave could formulate an answer, and the doctor sighed.

“I am on my way. Mr Katz, if you need anything, just ask VINA.” And with that, the bizarre door slid open again and Dr Nwoye was striding away.

The room was silent for a few minutes as Dave thought about this whole situation. He’d think it a fever dream, but he wasn’t sure he was creative enough to come up with all of this. “VINA?” he said eventually, feeling more than a little silly speaking to an empty room.

But the disembodied voice responded immediately. “Do you require assistance, Mr Katz?”

“I…What the hell is going on?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean. Please elaborate or rephrase to receive appropriate support.”

“I got  _ shot _ . But I don’t even have a scar.”

“You are correct. Do you have any questions about your treatment?”

Dave exhaled shakily and touched his chest again. Even that should have hurt, and though he was incredibly grateful that it didn’t, that fact was in itself unsettling. “What kinda doctor can just make a bullet wound… vanish?”

“Dr Nwoye is an expert in bioregeneration and biotemporal manipulation.”

“Bio… Jeez.” He could guess at what those words meant, but truthfully, he had no idea. It may as well have been another language. Was this the world Klaus had come from? This strange world filled with people and words he didn’t know, where gunshots through the chest were not just survivable but left no mark, where unseen people watched and spoke with you, where a black woman with a wife could be a white man’s doctor. It wasn’t a bad world. It was simply so far from the one he knew. 

Some things would always be the same, though: hospitals were boring. Dave was half out of his mind with it, staring up at the ceiling and wishing he had something to do. Talking to VINA was just a little too weird, with her uncannily smooth voice and questionable existence. So he got out of bed, deciding to explore. There were no windows, only artificial lights built into the ceiling. He couldn’t even tell what time of day it was. The room was neither warm nor cold, despite the fact he was wearing only white cotton shorts. 

The door that the doctor had come in through didn’t have a handle. Instead, he found a panel of buttons on the wall beside it and pushed one hopefully. With a hydraulic hiss, the door opened and he stepped out into the hallway. “Please remain in your room. If you require assistance, this can be provided. If you are searching for the bathroom, this can be located through the other door within your room.”

It was strange, being scolded by someone - or something - he couldn’t see, and in such a calm manner. But Dave obeyed and stepped back inside the confines of his room. He may as well check out the bathroom if he wasn’t allowed anywhere else. 

There were clothes folded up on top of a cabinet next to the shower, accompanied by a ziplock bag of toiletries and a towel. He figured those must be for him. He was about to strip off, out of the plain white shorts he’d been left in, when a wave of self-consciousness overtook him. “VINA?” he said hesitantly.

“Do you need assistance, Mr Katz?”

“I, uh… Are you watching me in here?”

“I am tasked with monitoring all rooms of the Temps Commission Infirmary.” 

He’d spent enough time in the military to be comfortable enough getting undressed in front of other men. But in front of a woman? Even if she might be a machine and not a real woman, it still felt wrong, somehow. “Could I get a little privacy?”

“To ensure your safety and the safety of other patients, I am required to observe at all times. Surveillance footage is wiped from my systems after two weeks and is not accessible without appropriate justification from Temps Commission staff.”

That still wasn’t exactly reassuring. Dave couldn’t even see where VINA was watching from, couldn’t work out where to position himself to turn his back. He’d been changed out of his fatigues, so someone had surely seen his naked body here before and there was no guarantee that they were all male, but the irrationality of his desire for modesty didn’t change anything. 

_ She’s seen it all before _ , he told himself.  _ There must’ve been hundreds of naked people in this hospital. And maybe this is just how things are in the future _ .

His shoulders dropped under the warmth and the strength of the water. It had been so long since he’d had a really good shower. He wasn’t sure he’d ever had one so good. Perhaps Klaus had had a point, waxing lyrical about the joys of a hot bath. 

But then he touched his chest, touched the unblemished skin, and the touch stole the air from his lungs. He could feel it, feel himself being torn apart by the most agonising pain he had ever felt. What was the difference between warm water and hot blood? It all felt the same, running down his skin. Hands shaking, he switched the shower off and sank down to sit on the floor, his knees pulled up to his chest as if they could shield him somehow. He wanted his mom. He wanted Klaus. He wanted to be held and told that it was okay, that he was safe. 

Eventually, he slowed his breathing enough to realise he was getting cold, the water having cooled on his naked body. He got shakily to his feet and dried himself off before busying himself with getting redressed. He could do this. It was systematic, routine, a way to feel just a fraction more normal, even if the clothes weren’t quite right either.

It wasn’t that he was ungrateful, but he did feel slightly strange in them. The pants seemed too fitted around the legs and a little too short, with rips across both knees. He supposed even in the future, free clothes couldn’t always be new or in best condition. But he’d be able to fix them up easily enough. He’d never been as well-taught as his sister, but he’d been so eager to copy her in whatever she was doing that his mother had decided it was easier to just teach them both. 

He wondered what had happened to Marie. How long ago had it been for her since they’d last seen each other? 

“Mr Katz, you have a visitor.” VINA’s voice was still startling, with no clear source and no warning. 

“A visitor?” he repeated. Who was here, visiting him? Who even knew he was here?

“Would you like to allow them access to your room?”

Dave looked himself over in the mirror. His hair was still damp and the clothes may be strange, but at least he looked decent. He looked normal. He didn’t look like a man who had just been shot. 

But he pushed those feelings down, squared his shoulders and kept his head high as he stepped out of the bathroom and back into the bare room. “Yeah, let ‘em in,” he agreed. 

He didn’t know what he’d been expecting, but it wasn’t this. A very short man in a suit and a pair of glasses stepped into the room with an air of someone who didn’t feel quite certain how much space they were able or willing to take up.

“Hi, Mr Katz, right? I’m Herb, I’m, uh, Acting Chair here at the Commission,” the small man said with an awkward wave. “It’s good to see you up and about! And- and the timeline should be safe from any, uh, any attempts at rescue, so that’s a big bonus.”

Dave had resigned himself to the fact that everyone here was crazy. But there was something warm about Herb, something he liked. “Can you explain what’s going on? The doctor, she said something about anomalies?”

“Ah, well, in this case, we’re, uh, preventing a potential anomaly. I’ve seen firsthand what a determined Hargreeves can do, and I figured if we make sure none of them have a reason to go messing up a timeline again, it makes our jobs here easier!”

Dave’s breath caught in his throat. “You know Klaus?”

Herb giggled. “Do I know Klaus? Everyone here knows Klaus, he’s a  _ Hargreeves _ . But I met him! I mean, I’m basically friends with his brother Diego, so you could say I know him better than most people here.”

Dave could barely hear what Herb was saying. His mind was racing faster than his heart, the use of ‘know’ rather than ‘knew’ enough to sustain him. He was still alive. And even if he was old now, stuck on the slow path through time, Dave knew he would still love him. He would love him until the end of the Earth. That had been a silent promise, as unspeakable as everything that they were, but as real and constant as the sun rising every morning. Forever was too much to vow in a war zone, but the intent had always been there. “Can I see him?”

“Well, that’s the plan!” Herb said brightly. “If you’re willing, we drop you off with him in 2019, there’s no need for any more time travelling shenanigans from the Hargreeveses, and we can all get back to normal!”

Fifty one years had passed. Would Klaus even still love him, after all that time? He almost couldn’t picture Klaus as an old man, not when he was full of so much energy, when he was so childlike sometimes. Was he an old man? Or had he somehow found a way back home before he had the chance to grow old? Back home... “People back home, my family… What happens to them?” he asked.

“Ah. Well, they think you’re dead. And unfortunately, they kind of had to. I’m afraid even if you turn down our offer to join Mr Hargreeves, you can’t go back to 1968. We made sure of that. And ooh, boy, that was a tricky one, but you’re not our first faked death and you sure won’t be our last!” Herb laughed, as if this was normal. As if this was simply how the world worked. And maybe it was. Maybe the world was bigger and stranger than anything Dave had ever seen. Anything but Klaus, of course. He was the maddest, strangest, most beautiful world all of his own.

In his mind, it had been just over a day since he’d seen him. But he missed him as if it had been weeks, months even. Maybe years. Did the ache dull over time? Would Klaus still be missing him as badly as he missed Klaus?

“If you’re, uh, amenable, we’ll drop you off in 2019 as soon as you’re discharged.”

It was a leap of faith into an unknown future, a new world. “I am.”


	2. Reunited

Dave had known that Klaus grew up in a big house, but nothing could quite have prepared him for the imposing vastness of this building. It seemed too big to be a home of any kind - not that it had ever been much of a home, if what Klaus had told him was anything to go by. 

“This is it?” he asked.

“It sure is. The Umbrella Academy!” Herb seemed positively delighted. Dave wanted to feel the same way, but his heart was beating too fast and his mind racing too much for that. What felt like just a day ago, he had as good as died in Klaus’s arms. He had seen his lover break and it had torn him apart almost as much as the bullet. Klaus still thought he was dead. Everyone thought he was dead.

He had a single suitcase to his name, currently resting on the ground beside him. Apparently the Commission was more powerful than he cared to think about, obtaining all the documents he’d need to live in the twenty-first century with concerning ease. The supposed fact that he had been born in 1990 somehow seemed the most bizarrely futuristic, but all of it started to unnerve him if he thought about it too much or for too long. And he was already plenty unnerved. 

The person who opened the door to them was a child. He couldn’t have been older than fifteen at most, though he had the look of a much older man, one who had been interrupted while reading the newspaper and enjoying his morning coffee. This must be Five. Klaus’s time travelling, previously missing sibling. “Herb, I’m not coming back to the Commission,” the child said bluntly.

“I wasn’t gonna ask you to! I know, you’re retired,” Herb said with an awkward grin. “I’m just here to make a, uh, delivery. Think of it as part apology, part ‘we’re hoping you won’t do any more to screw up the timeline now we’ve got it all nice and fixed up if we do this for you’.”

Dave should probably have felt more insulted by being referred to as a delivery, as if he was some kind of package, but he was too busy processing the conversation. So Five had worked for the Commission? Was that how or why he could time travel? Or was that how the Commission had learned to time travel? Before he could figure it out, Five’s eyes slid from Herb to Dave, and he realised he was making a terrible first impression. So despite his confusion, Dave forced himself to smile and held out his hand to shake. “Dave Katz. You must be Five, right? It’s nice to meet you, sir.”

Five raised his eyebrows as he looked him up and down. Somehow, this was so much worse and he felt so much more awkward than the times he’d met any girls’ father. How could someone who looked so young also look so… authoritative? Klaus’s family was confusing, but he knew they mattered to him. And that meant he needed them to at least approve of him, even if they didn’t  _ like  _ him. After what felt like an age, he seemed to find Dave adequate and firmly shook his offered hand. “I am,” he said coolly, then turned his full attention back to Herb. Well, that could have gone a whole lot worse. “I don’t have any plans to do any more major time jumps. I’ve had enough apocalypses for several lifetimes, and the two seem to go together when my family is involved.” 

Perhaps Dave was just going to have to get used to not understanding half of what was said around him. It was almost as bad as being on leave in Vietnam and trying to comprehend flashes of conversations in a language he didn’t speak beyond a few of the very basics. Though everyone associated with the Commission had spoken English around him, it may as well have been Vietnamese for all the sense it made. 

“Well, just in case your brother has other ideas, we figured we’d step in before he had you try and save Mr Katz here,” Herb said.

“Ah, you know one of my brothers. My condolences,” Five said sardonically. “Which one?”

Did he not know about the two of them? Klaus had said that each of his siblings knew he was queer, and Dave had just assumed that if he had found a way back to them, he would have told them about him. But perhaps it still needed to stay somewhat unsaid. Perhaps he hid his emotions around his siblings just as much as he did around acquaintances. 

“Klaus,” Dave said softly. His lover's name felt so right on his lips, it was hard not to smile whenever he said it. Sure, when they were alone, he was ‘baby’, ‘honey’, ‘sweetie’, but ‘Klaus’ could and did contain just as much joy and affection.

“Ah… He’s in his room. I can go fetch him, if you like?” Five offered with a nod and a knowing smile.

Dave barely managed to choke out a ‘please’ before Five disappeared in a flash of blue light, just like the one that had brought Klaus to him in the first place.

He was going to see Klaus again. He was going to see Klaus in a safe place, where there were no bombs and no gunshots and no need to look over their shoulders constantly to make sure no one saw too much. 

His heart leapt so intensely that it damn near knocked him sick, and when the tall, slender figure of Klaus Hargreeves appeared at the top of the stairs alongside his brother, time stopped. 

He was the same Klaus that Dave had left on the battlefield, but so different. His hair was long now, with his soft curls falling to his shoulders. He was wearing an oversized zip-up sweatshirt fully unfastened, that beautiful, foolish, romantic tattoo on show across his stomach and just as perfect as it had been the day Klaus had told him what it said. Hanging just above it were his dog tags, resting against bare skin perhaps just a little more tanned than when Dave had seen him last. He was a vision of eclectic perfection and Dave had never been so happy to see another living being alive and well.

The cheeky grin on Klaus’s face morphed into wide-eyed, open-mouthed shock as he made eye contact with Dave. He dimly registered Herb’s brightly exclaimed “surprise!”, but he couldn’t process anything that wasn’t Klaus. For Klaus to have grown his hair so long, it must have been over a year of Klaus thinking he was really dead. Even though Dave knew it wasn’t his fault, he still needed to apologise. Though he couldn’t turn back time, he could promise the rest of the time he had to give. Though he couldn’t fix it, he could do everything in his power to make things okay again and to cherish this second chance he had to offer Klaus his heart. 

“Hello,” he said softly. “I’m sorry if I kept you waiting.”

Eventually, Klaus glanced over at his brother, blinking back tears. “You see him too, right?”

“Obviously.”

Before Dave could say or do anything more, Klaus was pushing past Five and rushing down the stairs. He threw himself at Dave, hugging him so tightly that he almost couldn’t breathe, holding on as if his life depended on it. Dave’s arms found their rightful place around him within a second, and as soon as they did, Klaus seemed to melt against him with a trembling exhale. He couldn’t see his face, but Dave knew his lip was quivering. He knew that look, knew Klaus’s ‘struggling to hide how much he was hurting’ face. He didn’t need to see it. He just needed to hug Klaus tightly, to rub his back in the way that said ‘we’re safe now’. 

“I’m gonna be so pissed if this is another dream,” he said, his voice slightly stuffy with suppressed tears. 

_ Another _ dream. So Klaus dreamed about him. If only his younger self could see this, could know that one day little David Katz was going to end up in the dreams of the most wonderfully crazy and incredibly beautiful man who had ever lived. “I think this is real,” he said. 

Klaus pulled back just enough to look him in the eyes, his hands on Dave’s biceps. The way he looked at him… Klaus had always looked at Dave like he was something special, but this was more. This was like he was the eighth wonder of the world, the most marvellous and incredible sight imaginable. “How _ the hell _ ?” Klaus asked, those beautiful eyes turned misty.

“If I could, uh, field that one?”

Dave had almost forgotten that there was anyone else there with them. It was like they were alone again, in one of their stolen moments for just the two of them. The rush of panic of being caught had him instinctively stepping away and letting go of Klaus, as if he could somehow pretend that they hadn’t been caught in one of their secret, tender moments. That panic was hard-wired into him, a self-preservation instinct. 

But he was safe here. Herb knew about them both. Five knew about Klaus, at least. They were allowed to be seen together here. So Dave slipped his arm around Klaus’s waist and pulled him close. He never wanted to let go again. 

“We figured, well, we don’t want any more Hargreeves related timeline screw-ups, and our, uh, previous management didn’t exactly give your family the best, uh… You know.” Dave didn’t know, but he wasn’t going to interrupt and ask, particularly when both Klaus and Five seemed fully aware of what he meant. “So we figured the best way to do that was to do some light resurrection to reunite you two in 2019 and still keep everyone back in 1968  _ thinking _ that Mr Katz here died in action.” 

“Elegant,” Five said approvingly. “A faked death is never easy to execute well.”

Herb seemed to be fighting back glee over the praise. “Thank you. As Acting Director, I feel like a few tweaks to the way things are run are a welcome change. There’s no reason we can’t employ a spectrum of tactics to keep the timeline running smoothly. Plus I gotta say, I’m always a sucker for a good love story.”

Klaus laughed. But it wasn’t his usual laugh. It was tinted with hysterics, with madness and sadness and that inescapable sense that he was barely holding it together. Klaus liked to hide behind his jokes and his careless attitude, but Dave knew him well enough to know that he was on the edge and even the slightest thing could push him over into a breakdown. He wanted more than anything to take him to some private corner and guide him through it, to cry with him and hold him and promise him the world. But could he, with Herb and Five watching? Would Klaus want him to? Physical affection was one thing, but Klaus had always found emotional closeness much more intimate.

The laugh turned into a choked sob, and Dave couldn’t hesitate anymore. He needed to wrap his love up in his arms like a shield promising him safety and protection, so that was what he did. “I love you,” he whispered, his voice so soft that no one else would hear. But this time, it wasn’t that he needed to hide his love, he simply didn’t need them to hear. All that mattered was that Klaus knew and never forgot it. 

“Herb, would you join me for a drink?” Five offered, and Dave made a mental note to thank him for that when he next got a chance. But for the time being, he could just savour having the chance to comfort Klaus without an audience as Five and Herb left them alone together.

“I watched you die and I couldn’t save you, and I… I thought I’d stopped this version of you ever existing and still couldn’t save you,” Klaus said, his voice heavy and trembling. 

Dave didn’t really know what that meant about a version of him, but he didn’t need to. There would be time for explanations later. “Hey, none of that,” he soothed. Klaus had always been so ready to sacrifice himself, to do anything to keep Dave safe, his own self-preservation and safety be damned. And yet somehow, Klaus still seemed to think that he was selfish. Somehow, he thought both that he must be a hero and that he wasn’t and could never be one. “You don’t have to be a superhero for me, remember? You’re already my hero, just as you are.”

This time, Klaus’s laugh was much more genuine. “You sap,” he teased, though his eyes were still damp when he pulled back enough to look at Dave. “I missed you so much…”

However long it had been for Klaus, he didn’t look any less in love than when Dave had last stolen a private moment with him. However long it had been, Dave’s hand still fit perfectly cupping Klaus’s face, and when he kissed him, they still melted together as if they belonged together. Perhaps they did.

Klaus’s breath tasted of stale cigarettes and from anyone else, it might have been off-putting. But this was Klaus, and Dave was so glad to see him safe at home that even the smoke on his tongue tasted like pure bliss. 

“I love you,” Dave repeated when they broke apart. He’d didn’t think he’d ever get tired of saying that. 

“I love you too.” Klaus looked down with a soft smile, a hint of that rare bashfulness that Dave had always loved. He was so sweet when he didn’t try to hide behind a joke or a distraction. That tenderness, that vulnerability, it was such a gift to get to see it. 

Dave tucked a fallen strand of hair behind Klaus’s ear and lifted his chin with the tips of his fingers. “You know how we talked about getting some little place together somewhere all private and safe where we could wake up next to each other every day?”

Klaus gave a soft chuckle. “Uh-huh. You promised to make me proper bagels for breakfast.”

“I’ll make you whatever you want, baby.” He’d never actually cooked much of anything without his Mom or his aunties ordering him around, but he was sure he could figure it out. If it would make Klaus happy, he’d find a way. He had a second chance to be with Klaus, a chance where they could be safe together, and he wasn’t going to waste that. He’d make Klaus anything his heart desired. Perhaps one day he could even make Klaus his husband. But he was getting ahead of himself. It was too much to ask Klaus to marry him then and there. He didn’t even have a ring, and if he had the chance to do it in this wonderful future, he was going to do it right. He’d never thought much about marriage before, but he was undoubtedly in love with Klaus and this was a world where marrying a man was possible. Suddenly the whole concept seemed much more appealing than it ever had before. There was time for that later, though. There was no rush, and Klaus had been forced to think he was dead for far too long. He needed time to heal first. 

But when Klaus’s smile was so perfect, it was hard not to think about how much he wanted to be with him. “Is this your way of saying you still wanna get that little place together? Because we could. Turns out dear old dad never bothered to write a will, so his money automatically gets split between the six of us once it clears. And I’m not even gonna spend any of it on getting high.”

They’d imagined that life so many times, but it had always been an abstract future, a ‘one day’, a wistful fantasy to help them survive. The idea that it could become real, even if neither of them could have predicted the circumstances, was almost too much. “Of course I want that,” he said, then leant in for another kiss. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Domestic klave makes my heart go !!!


End file.
